Mangoes and Maudlin Reveries

My deepest regret of late is the fact that I am allergic to mangoes.

One cannot experience the magic of a sweltering hot Desi summer without mangoes. As a rule I only allow myself one or two mangoes per season, followed by desperate bouts of drowning myself in lassi and water...but them zits still come, all-encompassing...much like the mythic swarm of locusts...only this time emblazoned across the contours of my face.

Recently I have been haunted by an image of myself at twelve relishing the laziness that a Pakistani summer is supposed to summon but no longer does. I have been trying to identify what is missing: the pace, the flavour, the sounds or the smells... all of which, when merged to perfection, managed to create an atmosphere of something old and timeless and beautiful simply because it no longer exists. It is odd how we can forgive our demons in retrospect because they dissolve into faded fragments that are somehow simultaneously pretty and pitiable.

Back to the mangoes - there is something about mangoes that epitomizes the East...they are inherently lazy as a fruit...or they inspire laziness... either way in our part of the world it all amounts to the same thing. I specifically remember myself in a time where houses had bare-chip floors, the old variety of cane-chiqs (spelt differently only to avoid association with poultry or hot women, not that I have anything against either) that were actually designed to block sunlight instead of filtering it in through intricate patterns, small knobbly knit darri's and the entire family- for better or for worse till death did them part, that or indigestion- needed to spend summer afternoons in one room because air-conditioners were a luxury and only one was allowed to run at a time. Summers meant that all my cousins - and that is an 'all' of thirteen- would get together in one room, perched waiting in front of one of those massive 'dechki's' with mangoes swimming in ice-cold water.

I now recall drawing my lines and tracing my alienation from society and family from this point. This could have been because the hostile nature of my epidermis ensured that I could never really join in, or because I was the one stuck with the job of peeling the mangoes that I wouldn't eat but could still smell. The languid scent of the 'chonsa' ought to be bottled and marketed as the quintessential fragrance for lazy afternoons or to insomniacs as a sleeping drought more powerful than Valium. It was the year where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were an overwhelming influence, NTM evening programming proffered a daily sabbatical from the never ending hide-and-seek quest for survival with the parental units and the standard soap-of-choice was Imperial Leather and Palmolive.
We depended largely on mattresses, (I wonder why people hardly use mattresses anymore) and afternoon naps were compulsory, before summer-vacation homework regiments could commence in the evening. I cannot believe I shall say this, but I think I miss the time where a before-bed routine meant ironing three layers of school uniforms or when wake-up rituals meant an actual breakfast. Or perhaps what I miss is the fact that I was somehow needed - even in the worst capacity as a scullery maid - but needed nonetheless. People, I feel, can largely be bracketed under these two categories: those that need others and those that need others to need them. I am quite sure a third trajectory exists but I have yet to come across one.

I remember an instinct for self-preservation making an appearance in the least likely setting. I have seldom been one for afternoon naps, unless this meant my not having slept all night and having sleep spillover from morning to evening. This aversion is especially true in the context of 'regimented' sleepy time - I am notoriously bad with regiments of all kinds. So the afternoons used to mean the only time of day where I was cut some slack...with everyone asleep, it meant three hours to myself sans chores and sans snubs. I remember tip-toeing out of the snooze vortex, making my way to my own tiny room, switching on the fan, pulling out a book and stealing coke from the crates in the kitchen pantry, which I would replace when Baba Faiz made his evening round to the market.

Few can relate in spirit, but there is an inexplicable thrill in hiding and surviving in the throws of escapism. I have discovered that this only works when outside forces are in contrast contradiction. We need conflict to have something to battle against, survive and/or overcome because in surviving something, anything, we realise our mettle and the fact that we are alive or whether we feel we deserve to be. I remember setting alarm clocks to go off twenty minutes before everyone was to wake up and sneaking back into bed before they did. I am good at being sneaky, constantly planning my next word, move or thought. Which is why those two or three hours were priceless, they were precious because they were transient and every word read or absorbed during them took on a layer of added meaning because there was a purpose behind the journey. It wasn't just idle escapism, it was planned and a lot of planning had gone into bringing it about. This made the voyage - were it with Sancho in Don Quixote or with Peter and Wendy in Pan- all the more poignant. There was an active effort made to seek out the journey, which in effect made the crew worthy and was a journey of its own. Navigating moments in time is my specialty...I am distinctly uneasy with calm seas.

Perhaps this is what is oddly troubling...calm seas as far as the eye can see lay set out before me. There are no more battles and I have joined the legions of old, crippled knights who 'once engaged in great battles'. No one stops to consider that during the battle, every soldier dreams of peace and a home, and once he is there seeks adventure all over again. There is little nobility in contrived conflict, which is what I tend to rely on for inspiration these days. Manufacturing phantom potholes and problems to overcome has now become a necessity because I am lucky in the absence of real ones. Art and inspiration die without conflict, which is why it is necessary to keep the latter alive. Even if all I've got left is a long-winded diatribe about mangoes and allergies.

Times have changed all around. It isn't just me and my picture - it is the canvas that has changed. Time can no longer be whittled away by idly carving in bouts of activity when we choose. Time now chooses the activity and we are the ones whittled in. There are separate rooms now and separate air-conditioners running for hours on end. Television is no longer fun: it is frequent, fruitless and fabricated. We now have Mc Donald's and pizza and mangoes are uncomfortably wedged as an after-meal, if there is room or inclination for them.
There is no 'one' identifiable flavour, smell, sound or sensation to frame any memory .
It is all a congealed mess of mix-ups.

Either it is what it is and the blasted grass is just never green, or I am just bloody ungrateful...or, in all likelihood: a bit of both. There is a perverse prettiness in overcoming maudlin misery, but somehow when it has been overcome, when all is said and done, that prettiness switches tack to shabby.

In a banal setting, at an inconvenient time...does real beauty ever transcend?